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View Full Version : The Constitutional Amendment Con By W. James Antle, III




bobbyw24
08-09-2010, 06:51 AM
Last Friday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) let the cat out of the bag: his sudden crusade to reform birthright citizenship is directly related to his need for political cover on amnesty for illegal immigrants.

"Yeah, I think it's fair to say that I need to go home to South Carolina and say: listen, I know we're all upset that we have 12-14 million people illegally, " Graham told National Review's Daniel Foster. "I'm going to have to be practical. We're not going to deport or jail 12-14 million people." Graham's practical solution is the same old "comprehensive immigration reform," the logic of which is that it would not be amnesty for grand theft auto if the perpetrator got to keep the car in exchange for paying a fine and promising to read the owner's manual.

Of course, Graham already gave away the game when he entertained a constitutional amendment to clarify what the 14th Amendment says about birthright citizenship. The New Republic's Jonathan Chait recently snickered at the number of conservative constitutional amendments floating around that have been endorsed by "mainstream Republicans," but the joke is really on conservatives: a no-hope constitutional amendment is the usual way a GOP politician pays lip service to some conservative concern he plans to do nothing about.

A classic example is the antiabortion human life amendment. . . .

http://spectator.org/archives/2010/08/09/the-constitutional-amendment-c

erowe1
08-09-2010, 09:59 AM
Another good example is the repeal of the 16th Amendment included in the Fair Tax. Mike Huckabee enjoyed a lot of support from haters of the income tax, even though his entire career has been one of tax-and-spend liberalism and he ran on a platform of increasing federal spending far more than any other Republican in the race. He pulled this off by touting (when it was convenient) the Fair Tax. I'm pretty sure he knew full well that the repeal of the 16th Amendment, which is written into the Fair Tax legislation as a prerequisite for enacting the rest of it, would never happen. That way he could carry on taxing and spending and just shrug his shoulders and say, "I tried."

bobbyw24
08-09-2010, 12:02 PM
Right--if the Huckster is pimping the Fair Tax, there must be something bad about it.